What is the best format for an excel spreadsheet to join the data to a GIS layer? I have the home use license for desktops. I put data into an excel spreadsheet, imported that spreadsheet into my GIS on ArcMap, and joined the data into a layer that I had created. However, it did not seem to join properly judging by what I saw on the layer's table. Any suggestions?
What's the best.... Always a tough question to answer.
What type of attribute are you joining on (text, numeric, etc?) What is the join functionality: 1 to 1 or Many to 1? Personally if it's anything but 1:1, I use a relate instead. What is giving you the impression that the join isn't working properly?
Finally, and again just personally, I prefer to use excel for my invoicing and other book keeping procedures, but I use real-live database tables for my GIS work. YMMV....